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On close inspection I realise that the problem is that there is a little fore and aft play in the seating of the lower lift. When it is forward there is a gap of 6mm or so between the back of the slides and the base of the hive. The wasps have been using this as a side-entrance. So, I've...

There just seemed to be more fairly mature un-capped brood than I'm used to seeing. Maybe I'm just over-thinking it.

I moved a colony yesterday from a WBC hive into which wasps were encroaching and into a National hive. I didn't do a full inspection but did see the marked Queen as I moved the frames. She is a young freshely-mated queen, only been laying for a month. There were about 4 frames of BIAS but I...

Does anyone have any tips. I've found that whatever I do there seems to be gap between the end of the sliding entrance-restrictors and the lift that they slide against. Consequently I see wasps getting in through a 'side entrance' without the bees at the front seeming to notice. Has anyone...

When is too late to do a Split and have a reasonable chance of both colonies making it through the winter?

Thinking of adding a National hive or two to my small collection of 3x WBCs. How important is the Alighting Board to the National set-up? Is it necessary, or a gimmick? If the National(s) were put on a wooden hive stand (couple of 4” by 4” timbers) then is an alighting board necessary?

I am also a newcomer to beekeeping, this is my first full season. What I've learned so far is that not all advice is good advice and that you need also to use your best judgement and common sense. That's not much help, I accept. But quite often the online advice and indeed the books give...

I have a similar problem insofar that as a bi-product of Demaree-ing I have a lot of brood frames (DN) with stores in them even after extraction (crystalised OSR, I think). I tried putting them above the crown-board (but under the roof) in the hope that the bees would clean them, but they...

Have you found the poly hives durable enough?

But I thought that one can put wet frames above the crownboard (but under the roof) in order to allow the bees to clean them up. If so, surely they are then taking the salvaged honey back down into the colony, aren't they?

OK, but if spinning tangentially in what is a radial extractor the frames are entirely unsupported. So I'd have thought that even very cautious spinning is likely to cause them to blow. I guess I can make up some sort of wire frame to hold them in tangentially but it's a bit of a faff and I...

As a bi-product of the Demarees I seem to have quite a lot of capped-stores-filled DN frames. The 9-frame radial extractor that I've borrowed appears to fit 3x DN frames, but not absolutely radially orientated. Consequently they tend to either collapse when spun, or fall into the wrong position...

I inspected the combined colony today and was relieved to find the introduced queen happily laying up the brood-box of the formerly Q- colony. I was worried that having put her under what was quite a feisty and numerous colony I'd set her up to be killed but, as it happens, she seems to have...

As a matter of interest, when I did the Unite earlier today I had a quick look at the test frame I'd put in 4 days ago. I found that the bees appear to have stripped it of all the eggs and larvae except for 3 cells which were forming into EQCs. Is that normal?

OK thanks. I'll give it a go. And, final question (I doubt...), the test frame that I put in 4 days ago should come out at the same time if, as I anticipate, they've started building EQCs already?

I suppose that the only reason I was hesitating was that I considered the scenario where the smaller Q+ colony was in the bottom BB. Whilst the newspaper regulates the 'meeting' of the bees in the upper BB with those new ones in the lower BB, the returning foragers will all tend to come into the...

Because (and again, this is Books for yer..) the ones I read said that the Q+ colony should go on top. And the smaller one should go on top. My Q+ nuc is obviously smaller than the Q- colony, so I was a little confused. I think that I'd prefer to unite - but I've never done it before. So, nuc...

There seems to be conflicting advice in the books. So, a question: I have a large Q- colony and a Q+ nuc. I'm contemplating introducing the queen from the nuc into the Q- colony. How long do I leave her in the queen cage in the new colony before releasing her onto the frames?

And is the queen cage you have in mind the same sort of cage that you would use to introduce a queen to a Q- colony?

I think that that's excellent advice. Thank you. There have many times (even in my short bee-keeping time) when I've pondered whether or not I did the right thing. Time to think is very important.